Cincinnati and Lexington, Kentucky, were early rivals for literary prominence at the West: one was the seat of Cincinnati College, the other of Transylvania University. Many books were published at Lexington before 1825, and _The Medley_, or _Monthly Miscellany_, which appeared there in 1803, is believed to have been the first magazine published west of the Alleghanies. Hunt’s _Western Review_, which was formerly regarded as the pioneer, dated from 1819, and was also a Lexington publication. Lexington dropped out, and Louisville fell into place as a defender of the literary faith with the advent of George D. Prentice, who became the ardent champion of the muses in the Ohio Valley. The headquarters of poets for this region was the office of the Louisville _Journal_ during Prentice’s reign, and all of the Coggeshall poets laid the tribute of their song before him. To paraphrase Bishop Butler’s remark about the strawberry, quoted by Walton, doubtless Prentice might have declined a poem or discouraged a poet, but doubtless he never did. He was not an exacting critic, and he encouraged many who were without talent; but he took away the reproach of the neglected and unappreciated, and now and then he found a few grains in the chaff to pay him for his trouble. The _Literary Gazette_, which appeared at Cincinnati in 1824, with the motto “Not to display learning, but to excite a taste for it,” numbered Mrs. Julia L. Dumont, of Vevay, among its contributors; and she was the first Indiana writer to become identified with the group of aspirants that now began to appear along the Ohio. The prospectus of another _Western Review_, published at Cincinnati for three years from May, 1827, declared that “we are a scribbling and forthputting people. Little as they have dreamed of the fact in the Atlantic country, we have our thousand orators and poets.” However this may have been, “the Atlantic country” invaded the Ohio Valley in 1835, when the _Western Messenger_ was begun at Cincinnati, under the auspices of the Western Unitarian Association. It was edited first by the Rev. Ephraim Peabody, and later, at Louisville, by James Freeman Clarke. Clarke left Louisville in 1840, and the _Messenger_ was continued at Cincinnati by the Rev. W. H. Channing. John B. Dillon represented Indiana in its table of contents, and found himself in good company, with Emerson, William Ellery Channing, Jones Very, and C. P. Cranch. The periodical was, as Venable calls it, “an exotic--a Boston flower blooming on the Ohio,” and it ceased to appear in 1841. In the same year, the _Ladies’ Repository_ made its appearance at Cincinnati, under Methodist auspices, and was published continuously for thirty-six years. Mrs. Dumont, Mrs. Sarah T. Bolton, Miss Mary Louise Chitwood, Mrs. Rebecca S. Nichols, Mrs. A. L. Ruter Dufour, Horace P. Biddle, and Isaac H. Julian were the principal Indiana contributors. The number of Indiana